'Sopranos' creator turns to big screen

MOVIES

Updated 3:08 am, Sunday, December 23, 2012

David Chase, creator of "The Sopranos," is making his feature film debut with "Not Fade Away."

David Chase, creator of "The Sopranos," is making his feature film debut with "Not Fade Away."

Photo: Paramount Vantage

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John Magaro (left) is Douglas and Jack Huston is Eugene in "Not Fade Away," written and directed by "The Sopranos" creator David Chase
(Left to right) John Magaro as Douglas and Jack Huston as Eugene in NOT FADE AWAY, from Paramount Vantage and Indian Paintbrush in Association with The Weinstein Company.
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John Magaro (left) is Douglas and Jack Huston is Eugene in "Not Fade Away," written and directed by "The Sopranos" creator David Chase
(Left to right) John Magaro as Douglas and Jack Huston as Eugene in NOT ... more

Photo: Paramount Vantage

'Sopranos' creator turns to big screen

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After you make one of the most revered TV series of all times, finding a follow-up project can be a challenge.

That's what David Chase was facing when the screen suddenly blacked out at the end of his landmark HBO series "The Sopranos." He knew he had to maximize all the heat being generated by the conclusion of the series, but what exactly did he want to do?

The 67-year-old Chase was gravitating toward something involving 1960s rock 'n' roll, but his friend (and former "Sopranos" actor) Steven Van Zandt, who also happens to be a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, advised him against writing a personal drama.

"Stevie almost had me talked out of writing it in favor of doing some sort of hard-ass crime melodrama or suspense thing," Chase says during a San Francisco publicity stop at the Ritz-Carlton. "I got a lot of advice that sounded like that, but I continued to talk to Stevie about it."

Though he abandoned the project out of frustration, he picked it up and turned it into "Not Fade Away," his first feature film, opening Friday in San Francisco.

Chase's vision for the film stemmed from his own experience in New Jersey as a teenage drummer and bass player in a band that never had a name and never actually played a gig.

Too groovy

"We were just too groovy, too cool," Chase says. "We developed our sound in a basement for four or five years, and it became evident that I should be the lead singer. I could carry a tune better than the other guys."

Even though the band thing didn't work out for Chase - his parents even sold his drums without telling him - music remained vitally important in his young life. After he graduated from high school in 1964, Chase headed for college in North Carolina before transferring to New York University.

"I studied English literature, but I spent more time listening to records than I ever did reading 'Joseph Andrews' or 'Vanity Fair' or Dickens," he says. "I spent all my time listening to records. I can remember being at the record store before it opened waiting for the latest from the Stones or the Beatles."

By the time he was in grad school at Stanford studying film, Chase had distinct views on the counterculture. "The hippies sort of bothered me," he says. "I guess you could say I was more of a mod. The Bay Area was insane then."

"Not Fade Away," set in New Jersey, follows a teenager named Douglas (played by John Magaro with Bob Dylan hair) whose young life, like the country itself, is shaped by the changing face of rock 'n' roll. The soundtrack, which was spearheaded by Van Zandt, is full of the Rolling Stones, Dylan, the Young Rascals and Mother Earth, among many others.

'Needle-drop musical'

"As I was writing this, I thought of it as a needle-drop musical or needle-drop opera," Chase says. "You have to know what a vinyl album is to know what that means. I wrote all the songs into the script, and there was nothing we had trouble with except one song by the Who."

There's also an original song for the aspiring band in the film written by Van Zandt. It's called "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre," and it arrived just when Chase was ready to abandon the project altogether.

"I was tired and frustrated," Chase says. "Maybe I had even quit. I was going to move on to something else, maybe that Western I've always wanted to do. But then I got Stevie's demo, and it was really good. The structure of the song unwittingly paralleled the structure of the complete script, which takes place on holidays. I liked the song so much I went back to the script and retrofitted some of the scenes to reflect the lyrics."

Recognizable style

Fans of "The Sopranos" will recognize Chase's style in "Not Fade Away," which tends to focus on character and mood more than plot. "Yeah, that's sometimes to my detriment," Chase says. "I don't like plots that don't come out of character."

Finding actors to play his characters proved to be more of a challenge than Chase expected. He considers the movie to be, like the times it depicts, counterculture, full of hipsters, beatniks, hippies and mods, all with an attitude of revolutionary zeal. But just try and find that kind of attitude in New York City.

"We saw all these actors, 21 and 22 years old, in their torn jeans, scruffy hair, tattoos and body piercings. And they had no edge whatsoever," Chase says. "It was all just a costume. And some of them didn't know Jagger, Richards or Timothy Leary."

With his first feature film under his belt, Chase is moving on to other projects, including a miniseries for HBO about the history of Hollywood. "It's more of a thriller, suspense crime drama," he says.

Nostalgic

Lest you think Chase is nostalgic for the past, he says he's not. "I do like history and the past," he says. "I wouldn't say 'Not Fade Away' is nostalgic. I'm pretty cool-eyed about the '60s. I was never a 'hey, what a great time it was' kind of guy. But I find the artifacts of the past interesting. Very interesting." {sbox}

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